PSYCHOTHERAPY AS A HUMAN SCIENCE, MORE THAN A TECHNOLOGICAL ONE

Abstract

The current landscape of psychotherapy is as prosperous as it is disconcerting. Different therapies show comparable efficacy. Evidence-based practice has given way to a backwash of different movements. Psychotherapy process research leads to an archipelago of “niches of researchers”. In order to clarify this panorama, we have turned to the philosophy of science. The philosophy of science has made it possible to identify different epistemologies, reopen the distinction between positive natural science and human sciences and resituate psychotherapy on the human science side. As a human science, psychotherapy is, above all, a contextual holistic relational activity, person-centered and values-based, rather than a scientific-technical activity centered on “faulty mechanisms”. Wampold’s contextual model and a phenomenological-existential approach are milestones of this “new life” of psychotherapy, which is more human than technological-impersonal.

Keywords

• Contextual model
• Phenomenological-existential approach
• Evidence-based practice
• Practice-based evidence